December 2019 final December

GARDENING
The beautiful Burford’s holly accents perfect in your
wintertime garden
BY PETER LOEWER • ASHEVILLE
This month I was gearing up for
a Trump discussion but after
watching a few hours of today’s
TV coverage (11/20/19), I decided
to take off my political hat
and even while disliking how the
Holidays continue to creep up,
put on my garden hat and today
in celebration for, hopefully, a
peaceful Thanksgiving — and
beyond, I’m writing about a beautiful
holly that grows close to our
back terrace and is covered from
top to bottom with glorious red berries.
My chosen plant originally came from a cutting
produced back in the mid-1990s at Atlanta’s Westview
Cemetery where, according to a great article by Janet
Allcorn Williams (appearing in the December 12, 1954,
issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), these hollies
were first discovered back in the 1890s by the cemetery
gardener, one Thomas W. Burford, an English
nurseryman who emigrated to the South back in the
1880s.
Mister G. S. Lilly, who was a garden helper working
with Mr. Burford, reported that “The millions of plants
of Burford’s holly around our homes and buildings are
all children or grandchildren of the original bush which
is just inside the gates of Westview Cemetery. At that
time the parent plant, really a tree, was about 40 feet
by 40 feet, growing just inside the gates of the cemetery
and it was trimmed back for a number of years so
that thousands of cuttings first made their way to city
gardens, then the suburbs, and finally far and wide,
including Tennessee and Virginia.
“Mr. Burford,” continued Mr. Lilly, “was one of those
eccentric Englishman who did not have a relative in
this country. I suppose I knew him as well as anyone
living today, but he always managed to evade questions
about himself or the holly that was named for
in his honor. He was unmarried and devoted no time
to making friends and little time to his new holly, for
that matter. He propagated plants and set them out
With its glossy, evergreen leaves and a
prodigious crop of red berries in winter,
Burford holly (Ilex cornuta ‘Burfordii’) is
an excellent choice for a large accent shrub.
in the cemetery, then watched them only
to see that they were not picked or sold.
Our greenhouse did not sell any until after
he left Westview. In all, there are less than
400 of his plants in the cemetery, and he
worked here for more than 30 years.”
Mr. Lilly went on to describe the Head
Gardener as an unconventional man, who
would get a haircut once in three years,
was well-read, claimed to have been to
college, and bore a long mustache and a
beard being of medium build. He trained as
a botanist and loved his flowers, which he
cared for most tenderly, also admitting that his father
was a gardener for Queen Victoria.
When Mr. Burford was quite old, he moved to
Dallas, Georgia, where he boarded with a couple who
cared for him, and the accommodations must have
been exceedingly fine because he lived to be 90.
With its glossy, evergreen leaves and a prodigious
crop of red berries in winter, Burford holly (Ilex cornuta
‘Burfordii’) is an excellent choice for a large accent
shrub, an evergreen privacy screens, or training as
a small tree. It is always attractive with its naturally
occurring pyramidal shape. This holly survives winter
cold when grown in U.S. Department of Agriculture
plant hardiness zones seven through nine and can
eventually reach an ultimate height of 15 to 25 feet,
though more commonly it stays between eight and
12 feet. Burford is from the Chinese family of hollies,
which unlike other varieties, are known for their ability
to thrive after even the most severe pruning. Severe
pruning, often called rejuvenation pruning, also gives
them a brand new look in the garden, but it might take
a few years to recover if the pruning is too severe.
IF
YOU
GO
Peter Loewer has been writing about Asheville
gardening and politics, plus the occasional movie
that needs attention, since 1990. He also teaches
art courses in Continuing Education at AB-Tech.
His garden comments are heard on Asheville-FM as The
Wild Gardener.
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VOL. 23, NO. 4 — DECEMBER 2019 | RAPIDRIVERMAGAZINE.COM | RAPID RIVER’S ARTS & CULTURE | 31